Please pay attention to deadlines.Ideally, your activity schedule coordinator will send you a reminder email that includes their deadline for receipt of schedule items. Even if they don’t, deadlines are published every month, usually on page three. At least one issue a year has an early deadline due to the editor’s vacation.

Newsletter Submission InformationPlease send:

the 15 of the month prior to the issue month (ex. April 15 for the May issue)

Photos with captions-Pix should be at least 1800 x 2400 pixels – they will need to be placed in the newsletter at 300dpi. Jpgs, pngs, tiffs, pdfs accepted. If you are old school, be sure to put your name on the back of the print before sending it to the office. I will return it after I’ve scanned it.

Include captions with information including:

Event/trip

What’s happening

Who is in the picture (if you know)

Date (year at least)

Photographers name

Give the caption the same name as the photo but add _cap to it.

Don’t have a file naming convention yourself? Make the editors life easier by using:

(captions should have the SAME filename as the picture, only with "_cap" before the extension)

P_ericGehres_20081001_jLane_cap.txt

P_MohicanHike_20040204_cWorsley_cap.txt

As always, the editor reserves the right to shorten/crop photos to fit the issue.

Event registration form text –Editor can provide you with last years form to mark up and fax back. Editor usually sends you a draft that can be corrected before going to print. Drafts are time-sensitive with a very short response window.

Responsibility for getting a trip/event listed in the newsletter and web calendar lies with the leader, as it always has.Please do not expect that someone else is going to submit your trip to your Activity Schedule Coordinator unless you have discussed this with that person.

Send Schedule listings to your Activity Schedule Coordinator (bicycling, boating & hiking) or Activity Leader (all other activities) by their stated deadline. You can find their contact information in every newsletter at the bottom of page 3.

If your trip is not in the file sent by your schedule coordinator, it will not run.

Individual trip listings will not be accepted by the editor

Accepting your information sent directly to the editor once does not constitute an agreement to continue to do so. Instead, it almost guarantees that the editor will not make another exception for you.

If your Schedule Coordinator sends a draft schedule, look and correct it the first time.

Schedule items need to be in the specified format. Do not depend on your Activity Schedule Coordinator to fix it for you. (specified format is below).

Both the Editor and your Schedule Coordinator shouldacknowledge receipt of your submissionwith at least a “thank you”. If you do not get such a response, it is quite possible that your submission did not get to them.

Newsletter issues normally only include information for that issue month plus the next. Occasionally we run an entire season listing for use as a fridge poster, but please don’t submit the entire season every month. It causes extra headaches for your schedule coordinator when they have to edit the excess.

For recurring trips,You have two options: 1. Send your SC a confirmation monthly that the ride is continuing, or 2. Send the listing with anending date Also, if there is a week off, send a notice that can be posted to the web calendar, or the trip can be deleted for that week outright.

Corrections:If the draft schedule you received from your schedule coordinator (or you read in print) has incorrect information for your trip, send a corrected schedule entry asap.Send the entire entry (title, date & time, description, leader contact info), not just the section that needs corrected

Combining Activities?(ie bike & boat, paddle & climb) - You need to have the ok from both activity Leaders and the trip needs to be listed in both activity schedules (send to both schedule coordinators).

Bike Leaders:Your Schedule Coordinator, currently Donna (bikeweb@outdoor-pursuits.org) sends out a draft schedule every month. Please read it and send corrections/additions. She does not have time to chase you down, nor is she psychic.

Boat Leaders:unless you send the write up to your Schedule Coordinator, at boatweb@outdoor-pursuits.org (currently Keith Finn 1/28/15), he will submit the boating schedule file with the bare basic info from the planning meeting and you will have to deal with all the calls. Neither the Schedule Coordinator nor the Editor will chase people down!

If you are leading an Event(bike tour, boat school, etc.) and need information in other sections of the newsletter (Articles, registration forms),thatinformation does go direct to the Editor in addition to sending the schedule entry to your schedule coordinator

Schedule Coordinators

The Editor is responsible for collecting the stories, photos, applications etc. which should be sent directly to the editor, thereby arriving in separate files.

Each Activityis responsible for collecting and organizing its newsletter schedule and submitting it to the editor in an organized, plain text file where all listings adhere to theSpecified Format. All that the editor is supposed to have to do is place the file in the InDesign newsletter document and apply the formatting.

Please send compiled, organized activity schedules to the editor as a plain text file by 11:59pm the 15th of the month prior to the issue month (ex. April 15 for the May issue).

If you handle more than one schedule, send a separate, plain text file for each item. Example:

Main Boating Schedule – one plain text file

Wednesday Night Paddles – one plain text file

ACBE – one plain text file

In addition to compiling the schedule, some other tasks the Schedule Coordinator does are:

If Schedule Coordinatordoes not recognize the person as being an approved leader, questions are asked, including” have you taken appropriate leader training, first aid/rescue classes, do you have the skills for the job? Yes, this is officially an AC task, but it is usually delegated to the SC.

Posts the schedule to the web calendar.

The Schedule coordinator is encouraged to add activities to the web calendar after the newsletter has gone to print.

The Specified Format The following is the format in which you are expected to submit your information:

· Please,do nottype the title in all caps. It will look ugly in print.

· If your trip will be in a titled section of the schedule, please don’t use that title as the trip title.
Example:If your trip will be listed in the WNP section of the boating schedule, don’t use WNP as the title. All trips in that section are WNPs.

Line 2:Date+ time -Add class if space allows. If not, include class in the description that starts on line 3.

· day(s) of week, date (including the month) and time, please use am and pm instead of AM and PM-(one line, approx. 62 characters)

Line 3 to ?: paragraph or two of descriptionusually including starting point, distance. You must provide information concerning the difficulty level of the trip, prerequisites, any limits to be considered for the activity, approximate cost, deposit/refund information if called for.

· gps coordinates, if provided, should be in this section. Detailed driving directions should not be in this listing

· Deposits/Refund Policy: You will need to announce, at the time a trip is listed, the refund policy on deposits if deposits are required. You will also need to establish a date beyond which deposits are non-refundable

· Notes like: "contact leader for directions' and more detailed information will be provided at later date" need to be in the description section above the leader info line, not after.

· Editor reserves right to edit it down to fit space needs.

Last line:contact informationincludingname, email, and phone number (many of our members do not have email). -(one line, approx. 62 characters)

· Leading off with words like “Leader” and “Contact” is redundant since it is the leader contact line.

· Please use our official phone number format of 614/555-1234.

· If you want to reduce the amount of spam you get, present your email address as username AT domain.extrather than username@domain.ext

· Do not put anything pertaining to this trip after the contact information.

Here is an example of a Wednesday Night Paddle schedule submission:

Frisbee Park to DowntownJune 20, 2012 6:30 pm
Frisbee Park to Downtown Paddle on the Scioto River.
Frisbee Park is on the west side of Riverside Drive,( Rt 33).
This will be a shuttle trip involving class 1 rapids.Walt Taylor, 614/519-8633 kayakcolumbus AT gmail.com

You can reduce oddities in text by writing the listing in Word, saving as plain text, then coping that plain text to the body of your email rather than writing the blurb in the email.